


Between the Shadow and the Soul

by azephirin



Series: As Certain Dark Things [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15000-25000 words, Alternate Universe - Canon, Anal Sex, Angst, As Certain Dark Things, Bisexual Character, Chicago - Freeform, Dysfunctional Family, Established Relationship, Family, Food, Kansas, M/M, Secrets, Separated Young, Spanking, Travel, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-06 14:03:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winter. Days are short, night falls early, and secrets are revealed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the Shadow and the Soul

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [As Certain Dark Things](http://archiveofourown.org/works/51307), and unfortunately won't make much sense if you haven't read that first. (It's short!) Title from [Sonnet XVII](http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exner100.html#ex1), by Pablo Neruda. Thanks to [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/katomyte/profile)[**katomyte**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/katomyte/) for reading and listening to no small amount of kvetching.

The phone rings while the "boys" (read: Dean, his uncles, most of his male cousins) are playing poker in the den; the "girls" (read: his aunts, most of his female cousins) are in the living room drinking wine and gossiping. Dean and Uncle Frank wait for Aunt Martha to get it; when she doesn't, Dean hoists himself out of his chair and goes to pick up the cordless. "Hello?"

"What's up, Middle America."

Sam.

Dean can't exactly say, "Merry Christmas, jailbait," in front of half his family, so he settles for, "Hey. Merry Christmas."

"Yeah, back at you. Get anything good?"

Dean mouths, "Fold," at Uncle Frank, then takes the phone upstairs to his room. "Clothes, parts for the truck. Some CDs I wanted. What about you?"

"Maria got me books, like always. Juan got me...uh, let's just say that what Juan got me is probably illegal in a few states. Or at least it should be."

Dean flops back on his bed, feeling himself start to grin. "You realize that you have to tell me what it is, right?"

"I can't say that out loud!"

Sam Conover: perfectly capable of sauntering in and seducing his crew coach, but shies at the very mention of pornography.

"OK, OK. So books, porn. Anything else?"

"Debbie picked out clothes, and my dad said they were from him. Like usual. Money from my grandparents. Oh, and a new laptop."

"That's pretty sweet."

"I guess. I mean, I didn't need it, but my dad apparently decided that I had to have it, so now I do. Whatever. Listen, so what are you doing the rest of the week?"

Dean shrugs. "I don't know. Tinkering with the truck. Drinking with my cousins. Maybe catch up on some reading, since my grading's done. Why?"

"How far are you from Chicago?"

"Uh"—Dean thinks—"eight hours, maybe nine. It's been a while since I've been there. Why?"

"Because I really need to get the fuck out of my house, and I hear there's actual civilization in Chicago. To the extent that there's civilization in the Midwest, that is."

Dean's about to respond with an automatic "bite me," but something's wrong here; something's off. "Sam, what's going on?"

"At this time tomorrow, I'm going to be naked between crisp white sheets in a suite at the Drake Hotel on Michigan Avenue. Can you think of any reason in the world you shouldn't be there with me?"

"You're going to be where?"

"Dean," Sam says patiently. "I know you're not deaf."

"Sam, what the hell...how did you..."

"There's this thing, it's called the Internet. You can use it to make hotel reservations. Then there are these other things, they're called cars. You drive them, and they take you from one place to another."

"Fuck off."

"Oh, but I'd so rather you were fucking me. We'll be in a big hotel with thick walls. Don't you want to know how loudly you can make me scream your name? Or how long I can go down on you without letting you come? Because I'm looking forward to finding out. I mean, if you can leave Lawrence for a few days."

"You're going to drive to Chicago from Connecticut?"

"I like driving," Sam says.

"What the hell am I going to tell my family?" Dean asks, and he knows he's going to give in. As with everything that involves Sam, it's just a matter of time.

**************************

 

He tells Uncle Frank and Aunt Martha that Sam's a friend from MIT, a freshman when Dean was a senior. He's from back East but he's got family in Chicago, and they've invited him up unexpectedly.

Dean leaves the next morning. Sam's got a longer drive, but will beat him there: He was planning to leave more or less immediately after they got off the phone.

Dean realizes that Sam never did tell him what the matter was.

Dean's only been on the road a couple of hours when Sam calls him from somewhere in Ohio. "Man, it is fucking flat here. Jesus. I could roll a bowling ball down I-80, and it would just never stop."

"Welcome to the Midwest," says Dean. "God, what the hell are you listening to?"

"REM," Sam says haughtily. "_Reckoning_. It's a rock-and-roll classic. Which you'd know, if you listened to anything recorded after 1972."

"Son, you know you don't want to get into it with me about Zep."

"You calling me 'son' is just about the dirtiest thing ever."

"Sam!"

"It's true. I mean, I won't stop you, but I draw the line at calling you 'Daddy.'"

Dean hangs up.

Sam calls back.

Dean doesn't pick up.

Sam leaves voice mail.

"We can still do all the nasty daddy-kink stuff, though. Mmm. Like, maybe I did something to piss you off—oh, I know, you caught me jerking off!—and so you decide you need to discipline me. Maybe bent over your desk, with my ass bared. I'll take my belt off and hand it to you—kiss it first, though, because you know I love this—"

Dean calls back. "You won't tell me what Juan got you for Christmas, but you'll leave messages about _spanking_ on my voice mail?"

"That's totally different. There were clowns."

Dean howls with laughter. "Juan got you clown porn?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Sam says sulkily. "I have to go drive through Ohio now. Good-bye."

No matter how much Dean tries to shake it, the image of Sam bent over, back arched, pale bottom Dean's to spank, stays with him.

**********************

 

Dean stops in Iowa City to piss and get something to eat. Four hours later, he's in Chicago. He was only twelve or thirteen the last time he was here, and the noise of the city, the enormity of its buildings, and the speed and determination of its populace were overwhelming. Now that he's lived in Boston, none of those seem so bad—and now that he's dealt with Boston drivers, the ones in Chicago seem altogether sane.

The hotel, on the most famous stretch of Michigan Avenue, isn't hard to find. With some trepidation, Dean hands the truck over to a valet—he rebuilt the 1976 F-150 more or less from scratch when he was in high school, and it has taken him from Lawrence to MIT and then to Rockshire, and he's bizarrely protective of it.

The lobby is vast, high-ceilinged, chandeliered. Dean tries not to feel intimidated, in his old leather jacket, his denim shirt, his patched jeans. He doesn't care much about clothes, his own or anyone else's, never has, but he feels distinctly out of place here. Sam, he thinks, belongs in surroundings like these. Dean doesn't.

"Hey," he says, with an attempt to be casual, when he reaches the front desk. "Checking in under the name Samuel Conover."

The woman behind the desk types something into her computer, smiles in that customer-service-somewhere-really-expensive way, and says, "Welcome to the Drake." She hands him a card key. "Room 1664. Enjoy your stay."

He goes up in the elevator, finds the room, lets himself in. It's quiet; the curtains are open, and through the windows he can see the expanse of Lake Michigan stretched out against the sky. Maybe Sam's not here yet? It's a hell of a long drive from Connecticut to Chicago; he could have gotten stuck in traffic along the way. Dean turns on a table lamp and realizes that this is just a living room. Jesus, Sam. Dean sees a ribbon of faint light beneath a closed door. He crosses the carpeted floor, knocks lightly, opens the door, goes in.

Sam is, true to his word, naked in the bed (at least as far as Dean can tell)—but he looks to be fast asleep. Something sharp, sweet, and uncomfortable floods through Dean at that sight—Sam looks so achingly young. His face is soft in sleep, the usual angles of stubbornness and sarcasm relaxed into the smoothness of rest. With no one watching—not even Sam himself—Dean can do what he always wants to: He brushes Sam's hair back from his eyes, tucks it behind his ear, kisses his temple.

Sam makes a small, querulous sleep-noise. "Just me, Sammy," Dean says. He's apparently incapable of taking his fingers from Sam's hair.

"Hey." Sam opens his eyes, smiles. "Fell asleep. Sorry."

The silence broken, Dean's finally able to stand up and take off his boots, his shirts. He pauses at the buttons to his jeans. "You naked under there?"

"Uh-huh." Sam's eyes are closed again.

Dean undresses the rest of the way and folds his clothes on a chair. He crawls in bed next to Sam—it's only late afternoon, but it was a long drive, and this is really what he wants, himself and Sam. It doesn't matter where.

Sam tucks himself around Dean underneath the lawn of the sheets, the weight of the duvet on top of them. "Sorry I'm such a loser," he mumbles. "First time I've really slept since vacation started."

Dean doesn't ask why somebody might sleep better in a hotel in a strange city rather than in the house where they grew up.

"It's OK," Dean says. "Go back to sleep. I could use some, too, after the drive."

"K." Sam spreads his hand over Dean's heart, which is where Sam seems to have decided it belongs. He settles into the crook of Dean's arm, and his breathing is shallow, even—sleeper's breaths—when he adds, "Love you, Dean."

Dean's heart turns over in his chest. He stares down at Sam, but there's nothing he can do: Sam's asleep again.

Dean doesn't answer, not out loud, but there's no way he's falling asleep now.

*********************

 

It's dark by the time Sam wakes up. Dean hasn't slept: He's spent the past couple of hours watching the sun set over the lake, watching the lights of the city reflected off the water, but, most of all, watching Sam sleep. Sam stretches his arms and legs; fidgets; then rolls over so that his chin is propped on Dean's chest. "Hi," he says.

It really hasn't been all that long since they've seen each other. Sam left the morning of the twenty-first, ostensibly because that was when most boarders did; in reality, his exams were done the afternoon of the twentieth and his father's driver (_driver_, Dean thinks, not for the first time) could have come for him at any point afterward. Sam spent that night with Dean, and the driver picked him up in the morning. Dean waited until the last of the boarders—a kid from Saudi with a late flight—was gone, then started the long drive back to Kansas.

So it's only been about five days.

They're kissing like it's been five weeks.

Sam tastes like sleep, and like something that he must have eaten on the road last night or earlier today; Dean couldn't care less. He wraps one hand around the back of Sam's head while the other finds the small of Sam's back; they're pressed together, wrapped around each other like one complicated creature.

"Dean," Sam whispers, "want you to fuck me. Now. Please."

This is an eventuality that Dean could have easily predicted—but, of course, he didn't think to stop on his way into Chicago and buy something for them to use.

"I don't have anything," Dean says.

Sam disentangles himself and reaches into the top drawer of the nightstand. "I went out right after I got here. Thank God for fake ID, is all I can say."

"You don't need ID to buy lube," Dean says. Thanks to a skipped grade (fourth), he started MIT at seventeen and didn't turn twenty-one until midway through his senior year; he's well qualified, at this point, to judge what one can and cannot do without ID.

"Not at the drugstore," Sam replies, stressing the final word as though he'd just said _George W. Bush_ or _fanny pack_ or _Velveeta_. "But I wanted to go somewhere decent."

"Christ," Dean says. "I'm in bed with somebody who has to use fake ID to buy not just beer but lube."

Sam rolls his eyes. "Are you going to fuck me or not?"

It's Sam on top at first, straddling Dean's hips and taking him deep. Sam rocks back and forth, setting their pace regardless of Dean's pleas for harder and faster. Dean can hear himself moaning, feet flat on the bed, thrusting up into Sam as much as Sam will let him. His fingers flex on Sam's hips, and he's sure they're going to leave bruises, but Sam doesn't seem to care.

"Sam, please—faster, I can't take it—"

Sam shudders, smiles, takes one of Dean's hands. He cups it around his face, kisses the palm. "You can," he says. "Just a few more minutes—oh, Dean, like that—"

"Minutes—Sam—I don't think I can last thirty more seconds."

Sam slows his movements, and Dean throws his head back in frustration. He can't force the issue: He's effectively pinned, and Sam is several inches taller and, despite his lankiness, weighs as much as Dean does. "You...bastard," Dean pants.

"We'll talk about that later," Sam says, something bitter twisting his face, and, concerned despite the heavy haze of arousal, Dean runs his thumb across Sam's cheekbone. Whatever Sam meant by that, though, he doesn't follow up, instead tilting his head down to take two of Dean's fingers into his mouth.

With his other hand, Dean reaches for Sam's cock—if he can't get Sam to speed up through pleading, he can do it the dirty old-fashioned way.

But Sam slaps his hand like Dean's a kid who just went for the cookie jar. Sam bites lightly at the fingers still in his mouth, then wraps his own hands around Dean's wrists and holds them solidly against his thighs.

"You little bitch," Dean mutters.

Sam laughs, then sinks down hard and deep. Dean cries out despite himself.

"I don't—God!—think I'm the bitch here, Dean." Luxuriantly, Sam moves up, down, and Dean gasps, wants something to bite. He settles for his own lip.

Sam leans forward and kisses Dean, running his tongue over the teethmarks in Dean's lower lip. "You bit so hard you drew blood," he whispers. "Just trying not to come. Are you ready?"

"I've been ready," Dean says. "Asshole."

Sam's smile is entirely too self-satisfied. "Well, so come. But don't you want to fuck me for just a little while longer?"

Dean pulls his hands out of Sam's grip and flips them over. He thrusts hard into Sam and feels Sam's legs wrap around his hips, heels digging into Dean's ass. "What I want," Dean growls, "is to fuck you as hard as I please." He yanks Sam's hands from where they've landed on his biceps, and pins them on either side of Sam's head. Dean pulls out slowly, lowering himself onto his elbows to kiss Sam's open mouth, then drives back in fast and merciless. Sam arches underneath him, fighting Dean's grip, but Dean's been working in garages since he was fifteen, and Sam hasn't. "Do you really want me to let you up?" Dean says quietly.

Sam kisses him and smirks. "Just fuck me, bitch."

Dean does.

He thought Sam would be loud—he's had to clap a hand over Sam's mouth or press his own over it more than once back at Rockshire—but Dean had no idea it would be like this. Sam's demands of "harder, harder—come on, Dean, God!" graduate to shouts of incoherent pleasure as Dean does it harder, faster.

He loosens his grip on one of Sam's wrists, bites Sam's shoulder, then says in his ear, "Jerk off for me. Let me see you come all over yourself."

"You first," Sam says breathlessly, and bites Dean back.

Dean angles in and up, determined to render Sam nonverbal. Sam's legs tighten around him, and Sam pants, "Yeah, Dean, like that—like that!" They're moving together again, a single frantic organism, and Dean slides his hands up to tangle his fingers with Sam's. They kiss hard and messily, gasping into each other's mouths, and Sam breaks away to whimper, "Dean, I need..."

"What do you need, baby?" Dean whispers.

"I need my hand. Have to, God."

"Thought you said you weren't going to."

"I changed my mind. Dean—ah, please!—I need to touch myself or I'm going to fucking explode. I'll—fuck!—I'll get on my knees and beg later if you want."

Dean licks sweat from Sam's exposed throat. "Oh, you'll be on your knees later." He kisses Sam gently and releases his right hand.

It takes maybe five strokes for Sam to come. His back arches in an elegant bow; his eyes are closed; the fingers of his left hand clench Dean's so tightly that it's painful. He sobs out something that may be Dean's name, and his internal muscles tighten around Dean's cock, shuddering and forceful, as his semen paints both of them. And that's it, that's all Dean needs for orgasm to gather him up and throw him out. It's long, intense, and Sam kisses him through it, whispering "let me have it" and "yes" and "Dean." And Dean doesn't object, just collapses on Sam when the tremors have finished rolling through him. He listens to Sam's heartbeat slow, then arranges them both so that Sam's lying curled up against him, head on Dean's chest. This is how he likes to be with Sam, watchful and protective, hands gentle in Sam's hair and on Sam's skin to soothe that brilliant, spiky, completely unpredictable personality.

Dean wonders whether Sam will fall back asleep, but he doesn't, and Sam's hand draws contented little circles on Dean's ribcage and belly. "Was your drive OK?" Sam asks.

"It was fine. Just long. Though not as long as yours."

"I like driving long distances. A lot of time to think. I just load up the CD player, and nothing bothers me, you know?"

Dean thinks of driving back and forth to and from Lawrence and Boston, and now Rockshire. It's lonely, but there's something peaceful about it, too, especially at night, just his headlights on the road, as though he's the only person in the world.

"Yeah," Dean says, "I think I know what you mean." He winds stray strands of Sam's hair in his fingers; it's marvelously soft, like the fur on some small animal. "So you want to tell me why you took off for Chicago like a bat out of hell?"

"Wanting you to fuck me on thousand-thread-count sheets isn't reason enough?"

"Sam."

Sam sighs, burrows a little closer. "My dad and I always have breakfast together on Christmas morning. Charlotte—she's the cook—makes it, and Maria actually serves it, which is weird in more ways than I can possibly explain. It's without fail superawkward, but whatever, we do it."

"Is that what your family did when your mom was alive?"

"No. We opened presents and all the shit you're supposed to. Is that what your family does?"

"Yeah, and then my other aunts and uncles and their kids come over later in the day. We have dinner, and then the guys play poker and the women drink wine and gossip." Dean doesn't add: And we all wonder whether my dad's going to show up, and sometimes he does but most of the time he doesn't.

"That sounds really nice," Sam says.

"It's kind of noisy. But yeah," Dean admits, "it's nice."

"Anyway, my dad and I were having breakfast yesterday morning, doing our usual not-talking thing, and I told him—" Sam pauses and takes a breath. "I decided you were probably right. About my biological parents, I mean. A lot of kids are given away not because their parents don't love them, but because the parents just can't raise a kid—they're too young, too poor, whatever. So I told my dad that I'd been thinking, and I'd like to get some info on my biological parents, and would he sign off on it since I'm not eighteen yet?"

Dean doesn't pause, just keeps stroking Sam's hair. "So what then?"

"He tried to talk me out of it, and I got kind of pissed. Like he was trying to keep it from me. Which he was, but...well, apparently no one knows who my biological parents are. I was left on the front steps of an adoption agency on the Upper East Side when I was six months old. More or less six months, anyway. That's what a doctor estimated. So April 20, which I always thought was my birthday, most likely isn't my real birthday at all. They basically just picked a date because I would need to have one, and that span of time was their best guess."

"There wasn't a note or anything?"

Sam shakes his head. "No. I know that now a lot of times they fingerprint babies right after they're born, but no one really did that in the early eighties. So there wasn't a way to trace me. My dad said that it was a strange enough case that it made the papers: I was obviously healthy, had been well cared for, was dressed in clean clothes and all that—but no parents ever turned up. My dad showed me some of the articles. Anyway, the adoption went through like any other adoption, and my dad and my mom got me." That bitter twist is back on Sam's face. "And they really, really hoped I'd never ask about my biological family." Sam closes his eyes. "So I think I was right to begin with. If they didn't want me then, why would they want me now?"

"I'm sorry, Sam," Dean says. He doesn't know what else to say, and can't fathom how anyone would think it was right to abandon a helpless six-month-old on a doorstep in New York City. He kisses the top of Sam's head. "At least those people weren't the ones who raised you, though. I mean, I know your parents aren't perfect, but at least they didn't end up being the kind of people who think it's OK to leave a baby on a front stoop."

"There's that, at least." Sam's tone is indecipherable.

"So how did this translate to Chicago?"

"The whole thing ended kind of badly. My dad and I started yelling at each other. I'm not even sure about what, but I guess it figures that the first real conversation we've had since I was eleven would end in shouting. I just...I wanted to see you. I'm not some poor abandoned child to you. Even Maria—she's worked for my family since before I was born. She knows the whole baby-on-the-doorstep story."

"Your parents told her?"

"My dad did, later, after I started spending so much time with her family. I guess he wanted to give her a heads-up in case I ever asked. Anyway, my dad and I had our shouting match, and then I went upstairs and thought, well, I've never been to Chicago, and it's not that far from you—compared to Connecticut, anyway—and even if you couldn't come, I could at least get away from my house for a while and go somewhere."

Something occurs to Dean. "Sam, does your dad know where you are?"

There's a pause. Then Sam says, with just a trace of petulance, "I told Maria where I was going."

"But not your dad?"

"She'll tell him."

"Sam," Dean starts, but has no idea how to finish that sentence. "If I'd pulled something like that, my aunt and uncle would have killed me. Then my dad would have killed me all over again the next time he showed up."

"But you wouldn't," Sam says. "Because you're good."

Dean snorts. "And because Uncle Frank and Aunt Martha—or my dad, God knows—didn't give me a credit card with a ten-thousand-dollar limit."

"It's higher than that," Sam says under his breath.

In his dad's case, though Dean disagrees with whatever bizarre vendetta the man's taken up, Dean gets why he's done it. Sam, on the other hand: Dean loves him—that's an unfortunate but undeniable fact at this point—but he's about the most perplexing person Dean has ever met. _I don't understand you a lot of the time,_ he thinks but doesn't say.

Sam wriggles out of Dean's arms and onto his side, but one of his hands remains low on Dean's belly. "So," Sam says, "I don't know about you, but the last thing I ate was something crappy somewhere in Ohio—which, by the way, is a state I thought would never fucking end—and I could really go for some sushi."

"The last thing I ate was something crappy in Iowa—which, as a native son of the Midwest, I can say with assurance is a state that really never fucking ends—and you want to feed me raw fish?"

"Oh, don't give me that hick-from-Kansas act. You lived in Boston for four years. You went to MIT and they're practically salivating for you to come back and do your PhD. I know you've had sushi."

"The kind with vegetables," Dean says. "I like my dead flesh when it's not a health hazard, thanks."

"It's not a health hazard! Japanese people have been eating it for centuries."

"I reject your reality and substitute my own," says Dean.

"Oh my God." If Sam's eyes could roll back any farther, he'd be looking at the back of his own head. "You're the biggest nerd I've ever met."

"I won't deny that," says Dean. "But I'm still not eating raw fish."

"Fine." Sam rolls over and reaches for the phone. "I'll call the concierge and ask them recommend someplace where the dead flesh is thoroughly cooked."

Sam sits up to make the call, turning toward the bedside table, and Dean traces the fine lines of his back, delineates the muscles of Sam's shoulders, follows the line of his spine to the curve of his ass. He rubs the small of Sam's back, and Sam stretches with a small, pleased sigh. Sam writes something on the pad of paper that's on the table, then says, "Thank you," and hangs up the phone. He sprawls back across Dean. "Barbecue. I'm told that it involves roasting meat over open flame, and so it should meet your standards."

"I've never had Chicago barbecue," says Dean. "Only Kansas City. I hope I'm not committing culinary adultery against my homeland."

"I'm guessing we should take your truck," says Sam, "and not my dad's Lexus."

*********************

 

Dean's not a barbecue snob—unlike many of the people he grew up with, who attend the various festivals and competitions around Kansas and Missouri and speak knowledgeably (and often judgmentally) about the varieties of sauce and regional technique. The sauce here is sweeter than he's used to, probably closer kin to the Southern style—still, Dean likes it, and he also likes licking it off Sam's fingers. Sam's eyes go wide and dark, and he says, low enough that the people at the next table won't hear, "I am fucking you into next week when we get back to the hotel."

Dean laughs. "I'm going to be too full to fuck when we get back."

"You can't just...do that and then be all, 'Oh, I'm too full to fuck'!"

"Do what? You mean this?" Dean runs his fingertips through the sauce that's left on his plate, then, slowly and deliberately, licks them clean.

"I hate you," Sam mutters.

Back at the hotel, they're the only people on the elevator going up to the sixteenth floor. Sam shoves Dean against the wall and kisses him, determined and ferocious; Dean stops him, though, when Sam moves a hand between them and starts rubbing at the line in Dean's jeans. "Not here. We're giving the security people enough of a free show as it is."

"We are so fucking the second we get inside," Sam informs him.

Dean's really too full to want sex—he wasn't joking about that—but as soon as they're in the room, with the door closed and locked, he pushes Sam against it and goes to his knees. The blow job is fast and nasty, and Sam comes within minutes, keening desperately, fingers grasping painfully at Dean's hair. After, Dean tucks him back inside, then stands and kisses him; Sam, pliant and flushed from his orgasm, wraps his arms around Dean's shoulders and says, "What do you want me to do for you?"

Dean thinks of his hours in the car and of the jacuzzi tub in the bathroom. "A bath," he says. "What I really want is a bath."

Sam seems to restrain himself, just barely, from another eye-roll. "I'll wash your back."

The bath is one hundred degrees of foaming ecstasy. Sam mocks Dean for his moan of pleasure upon sinking into it. Dean does not care. The tub is big, though barely large enough for the both of them; still, Dean relaxes into Sam's arms and the hot water, closes his eyes, and thinks that if heaven is real, it might be a whole lot like this.

As promised, Sam washes him, but not just his back: He starts with Dean's hair, massaging shampoo into his scalp with strong fingers; then, "Tilt your head back," and rinsing it out, careful to avoid getting any in Dean's eyes. Sam smoothes bath gel over Dean's body, then rinses it, too, hands exquisitely gentle. He pauses occasionally to kiss Dean's neck or ears or shoulders, or to let himself explore Dean a little, though they already know each other's physical forms in specific detail.

Dean's almost asleep by the time Sam finishes, and he makes a noise of protest when Sam says, affectionate and amused, "Time to get out." He lets Sam pull him upright, though, and registers another complaint at the cooler air against his skin. Sam wraps them both in enormous white towels and dries them, starting with Dean's hair and going down to his feet. He shepherds Dean into the bedroom, and Dean thinks vaguely that this isn't right, that he should be the one marshaling and taking care of them, but he's too loose and sleepy to protest.

In bed, Sam curls around him, and Dean thinks that if he were going to tell Sam that he loves him, too, this would be a good time, when they're warm and close and it's dark and there's Lake Michigan outside.

Dean hears Sam laugh, and realizes that he just said most of that out loud.

"It's like you're drunk off a bath."

"It was a good bath," Dean defends himself.

"I'm glad." Sam kisses him behind his ear, and his hand unerringly finds the spot over Dean's heart. "And I love you, too, but you knew that."

"Uh-huh," Dean says, and falls asleep.

*********************

 

Dean wakes up the next morning alone in bed. Sun is pouring in through the windows, and the lake outside is a perfect winter blue, reflecting the clear sky back at itself. The door to the living room is open, and Dean looks through it to see Sam in one of the armchairs, talking on his cell phone. After a moment, it registers that he's speaking Spanish. Dean knows he's fluent—Sam's taking Latin I as a senior because he roared through AP Spanish his junior year—but he's never heard him speak it before. Dean dropped it after his sophomore year in college, but he can make out part of what Sam's saying, and he seems to be reassuring the person on the other end that he's fine, yes, really he is, and he'll be home before school starts back up.

A few minutes later, Sam ends the call and puts the phone on a side table, then drops his head onto the chair's back. Dean wishes he knew what might be going through Sam's mind, but there are parts of Sam, he thinks, that will always be closed to anyone else—and, Dean thinks, to Sam himself as well.

After a moment, Sam gets up and comes back into the bedroom, and Dean blinks as though he's just woken up. Sam's dressed, but he curls up next to Dean anyway, tucking his head underneath Dean's chin (which takes some maneuvering, since Sam is taller than he is). "You seriously sleep like it's an Olympic sport," he says to Dean.

"I had sex and food and a bath. And a nine-hour drive. I was tired."

"Or maybe you're just old," Sam suggests.

Dean pokes him in the spot in his ribcage that invariably produces a squawk. The strategy does not fail.

"So I was thinking breakfast," Sam goes on, "and then I kind of want to go to the Art Institute."

"You want me to get out of this warm, comfortable, thousand-thread-count-sheeted bed, and go look at art?"

"Their collection's amazing!" Sam protests. "And it's not that big—it's not like I'm dragging you to the Louvre or something. We'll go for a couple of hours, and then you can fuck me later."

"I can fuck you later anyway," Dean counters.

"You're sure of yourself."

"You're a sure thing."

"Asshole." Sam pokes Dean in the belly, and this time it's Dean's turn to squawk.

"I'll go look at art with you," Dean compromises, "as long as I get to see some dinosaur skeletons later today or tomorrow."

"The Field Museum! Yeah, we can totally do that. OK, good. Get dressed."

"If I have to look at art, I want breakfast in bed."

"You're such a philistine."

"For wanting breakfast in bed?"

"For needing to be bribed to go to an art museum. OK, fine. I'll call."

Sam does, and Dean stretches, and pushes aside the unpleasant thought of who's paying for this. The answer is, neither of them; the answer is also, the father of one of Dean's students. Dean will most certainly lose his job if they're found out—and because it's such a flagrant ethical violation, it would most likely jeopardize his graduate school applications as well.

He loses reason around Sam, in a way he's never done for anyone else. He's dated both men and women: He had a fiery Wellesley girlfriend for most of his first two years at MIT; there was a relatively serious boyfriend, another MIT student, when Dean was a junior; and there have been others, of both sexes, afterward and in between. He loved Mackenzie, his crazy riot grrl; they broke up when she moved to Seattle to be in a band, but they're still in touch. He loved Nick, tiny and solid and hilarious and fierce, now in the Peace Corps in Ghana. But he never felt this out of control with either of them.

If Dean were like his dad, he thinks, he would simply decide that things had to be over with Sam, and they would be. That's how his father is. Something—someone—family lore has always been murky on this point—killed John's wife and son, and John won't rest until he finds what it is. And usually Dean's like that: When he makes up his mind to do something, he does it. He wanted a truck, so he got a job at a garage and rebuilt one. He decided to try out rowing in college because he'd never done it before; now he coaches it. He runs five miles a day. He decided he wanted to go to MIT; he did.

The first month that he and Sam were doing this, Dean told himself every day that he'd break it off. And never once did he even bring it up. Now he's in way over his head, and it's no one's fault but his own.

"Hey. Broody McBroodypants," Sam says, but with inflection that's affectionate rather than sarcastic. "Pancakes are coming. You putting some clothes on?"

Dean doesn't force his smile, exactly, but it definitely requires encouragement. "After food," he says. "No earlier."

*******************

 

The museum isn't so bad—they usually aren't, Dean is forced to admit, once he's actually in them, and the arms and armor collection at the Art Institute really is cool. Of course, Sam wants to see the geeky stuff like European painting and sculpture. Dean could do without the various Madonna-and-childs, but there are some crazy twentieth-century sculptures, even if Dean can't figure out what the hell they're supposed to mean. (Dean wonders whether all Russian sculptors are insane, or just the ones represented here.) His reaction to the contemporary stuff is pretty much a big what-the-fuck (and he really could have lived without seeing that painting of the pope flanked by two butchered sides of beef). And he has no idea what the "Pitchfork Lady" thing was intended as.

They don't go to the Field—they save that for the next day—but instead drive up Lake Shore, beside the gleaming glassy water, until the road ends; then they have lunch Uptown. They're apparently near Rose Hill Cemetery, which, Sam says, has some spectacularly weird graves, but it's freezing out today, way too cold to wander around. They go back to the hotel, where they discover that there's a _Star Wars_ marathon on HBO, and where Dean discovers that Sam, too, can recite every single line. They stay in bed the rest of the afternoon, into the evening, making up their own dialogue and laughing at each other.

_Return of the Jedi_ concludes—with the remade ending, which Dean admits is better but which will always throw him for a loop when he sees it, because that's not how _RotJ_ is supposed to **go**—and Dean gets up to go to the bathroom. When he comes back a couple of minutes later, the TV is off and Sam is sitting on the bed, cross-legged, looking simultaneously expectant and nervous.

"What's up?" Dean says.

Sam's eyes flick down to his right side, and Dean glances down, too. There's what appears to be a belt lying coiled next to Sam's thigh, but nothing else. "Sam, what?" Dean says.

Sam breathes out, and Dean adds _annoyed_ to _expectant_ and _nervous_. "Dean, do I have to explain?"

"Um, apparently? Unless there's a memo I missed somewhere?"

Sam flushes and looks down. "Remember that voice mail I left you while you were driving?"

Dean feels his eyes widen. He's not a hick (much) (anymore). Mackenzie was nothing if not inventive—and research-oriented. Nick had more toys than Dean even had names for. Hell, Sam left him detailed voice mail about this very topic. He shouldn't be surprised.

And yet.

"Uh, yes," Dean says. "I remember."

Despite his apprehensive expression, Sam is all lean grace as he stands and walks over to Dean. "Chicken?" he murmurs in Dean's ear. He's leaning so close that Dean can't see his face, but he just knows that Sam's smirking.

Dean knows he's being played, but it doesn't seem to matter.

"Have you ever done this before?" he asks Sam.

"No. Have you?"

"Yeah. Not with a belt, though. Sam, have you been spanked ever? By your parents or anybody?"

Sam's lips are a warm, light pressure point on Dean's neck. "No. Doesn't mean I haven't thought about it." He pauses. "Though not by my parents. Eeew."

Dean gasps as Sam's teeth find a tendon. "OK, so there's a reason it's used as punishment. It fucking hurts."

Sam pulls back, mouth tight. "Did your aunt and uncle—"

"Like twice in my whole life, Sam. Calm down. I'm just saying, it does hurt."

Sam's hands slide to Dean's back and he guides them both to the bed so that they're sitting facing each other, Sam's hand rubbing gently—surprisingly, Dean thinks, not intended to arouse—on Dean's thigh. "So how did you do it? Before, I mean. Like, with a partner."

"It was mainly with Mackenzie. My ex-girlfriend. With my hand and, um, a ruler once." Dean can feel himself blushing. "She got this little punk-schoolgirl outfit somewhere, I don't even know where—"

Sam laughs delightedly. "With a plaid skirt and everything?"

"Plaid skirt, knee-high Doc Martens, spiked collar, button-down shirt. Push-up bra."

"That's hot."

"It was," Dean agrees. It really, really was.

"Your idea or hers?"

"Hers. Not that I objected."

"No," Sam says. "I imagine not." Sam swings his long legs onto the bed, settles them loosely around Dean's hips, not quite sitting in his lap. "So you liked it with Mackenzie. Why not with me?"

Dean doesn't have a good answer to that. Sam's not asking him to do anything he hasn't done before. There's no schoolgirl outfit this time, but that's fine. Dean's never been into that with guys.

"Kenzie had the whole scenario planned out ahead of time," Dean says. "I pretty much just took direction. What did you have in mind?"

Sam retracts his endless legs and stands up with that same predatory fluidity. His hands go to the top button on his jeans, but no further. "Well," he begins, "you could be my hot teacher, and I'm your student who misbehaved—oh wait, that's reality...."

Dean buries his head in his hands.

Laughing, Sam goes on, "OK, OK. So we won't play it that way. Um...hmm. I think the Daddy thing is too kinky even for me."

"Thank God," Dean says, muffled.

"Mmm. I've got it."

Dean looks up. Now the top two buttons are undone, and Sam's jeans are tantalizingly loose around his hips.

"You're my older brother—"

"How is that even slightly less dirty?"

"I don't have any brothers, so it's not like I'm picturing anybody's face," Sam says, as though it's obvious.

"Yeah," Dean says, "well, I did, and he had your name."

Sam sucks in a breath, and he looks immediately contrite. He crouches in front of Dean, nothing sexual about it, and sets a hand on Dean's knee. "I'm sorry, I didn't think— We don't have to—"

Dean puts his own hand over Sam's. "It's fine," he says. "Just think of something else."

Sam's eyes stay wide with dismay—then narrow wickedly. "I've got it. You're in a fraternity—"

Dean can't help snorting.

Sam rolls his eyes. "That's why this is a fantasy, jerk. Of course you weren't in a fraternity. You're way too dorky."

"OK, Calculus Boy."

"Whatever. Anyway. You're a senior brother—whatever they call them, I don't know. And I'm one of the pledges. And I've just done something that's terribly in violation of the rules, and it's your job—being older and all—to make sure that I'm suitably disciplined." He looks significantly at the belt, still lying innocently near where Dean is sitting. "Or whatever. I don't actually know why frats do that. They swear it isn't homoerotic, but I say it's gayer than a Liberace concert in George Michael's basement."

Dean fights back laughter again, and argues, "I'm pretty sure frats use paddles."

Sam's voice drops. "Maybe this is a private session. One-on-one instruction. Are you telling me there isn't room for improvisation?" Sam pushes his jeans down to midthigh, revealing black boxer-briefs with a Dolce &amp; Gabbana logo. As ever, nothing less than haute couture for Sam Conover. He hooks his thumbs in the elastic near his hipbones, then pauses. "Do you want to pull them down once I'm over your lap? Or do you want me to?"

Dean stares.

"Well," Sam starts, "in this one story I read—"

"Over my knee," Dean interrupts. "Now. Leave them up."

"That's what I'm talking about," Sam murmurs.

He arranges himself over Dean's lap—which takes some doing, given how tall he is. But in just a few seconds, six-foot-something of Sam is lying stretched across the foot of the bed, ass tilted slightly upward. He reaches up, takes a pillow from the disarray of the covers, and tucks it underneath his head.

"Comfortable?" Dean asks, amused.

"It's only my ass that's supposed to hurt," Sam points out, "not the rest of me."

There's a pause, in which Dean wonders, not at all for the first time, what the hell he's doing.

"So are you going to spank me like I deserve," Sam asks, "or should I start going over noun declensions?"

Dean slaps him across the ass. Sam shivers, but says, "It'd be better without anything in the way."

Dean slaps him again. "Did I ask you?"

"No."

Again. "Is it your job to give commentary here?" Again.

"No," Sam says on a sigh.

Dean gives him two more, and then two more after that. A shudder flares down Sam's body, and he makes a sound that's not quite a moan.

"Raise up," Dean says, and Sam does. Dean maneuvers the underwear about halfway to Sam's knees, then pushes gently to let him know to lie back down.

Dean rests his hand on the perfect curve of Sam's ass. He strokes lightly over the rounded cheeks. "Tell me what you did."

"You were the one who caught me," Sam retorts.

"If you can't say what it was," Dean fires back, "you can't be properly sorry for it." Sam arches a little, temptingly, but Dean pushes him back down. "Not until you tell me."

"Asshole," Sam mutters.

"If you're going to be disrespectful," Dean says, "I can just tell our president, and he can do this with his paddle, in front of the rest of the brothers—"

"Fine," Sam snaps. "I was jerking off on the deck. Where everybody could see me. On a towel. Which I stole out of somebody's clean laundry. It was amazing, Dean. I was pretending that my hands were yours, and I had one of them on my cock and the other one with fingers up my ass, and I was pretending you were fucking me, maybe bent over something—"

Dean smacks Sam's bare ass. This time he can feel as well as feel see the shudder. He keeps going, slowly but regularly, varying the spots where his palm lands. The impossibly pale skin of Sam's buttocks begins to turn a light pink. Sam's whimpering, but the noises are aroused, contented, and he pushes up and back, rubbing himself against Dean's lap, encouraging him. Dean stops for a moment. "Isn't it a good thing we're doing this in private. Look at you begging. Would you be doing this if you were in the common room over"—_quick, think of a name that doesn't belong to anybody I know_—"Todd's knee? Would you do this for him?"

"No! God, Dean, don't stop. For you. Only for you."

Dean gives him two more, then another two, then four. "Are you sorry?"

Sam turns his head towards Dean and smiles slowly. "Not in the slightest." He cries out when Dean slaps the "sit" spot, just above his thighs, but Sam manages to add, "I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

Dean stops and rubs Sam's ass, letting the heat sink in. The skin is well and truly pink. It's maybe one of the hottest things Dean's ever seen. "I don't think you're getting what you need, Sam," Dean tells him. "And you know that's my job, right? Your brothers are here to take care of you."

"So what do I need, then?" Sam asks. Even rock-hard, breathless from a spanking, he's still full of back-talk. Topping from the bottom, Nick used to call that.

Moving slowly, deliberately, so that Sam will be sure to register it, Dean picks up the belt from where it's lying on the duvet. He folds it in half and lays it gently across Sam's thighs—not a strike, just letting him know it's there. "I think you know what you need," Dean says.

Sam's body goes boneless. Not limp—just very...relaxed. "Mmm, yes," he sighs, eyes closed, tilting his ass even farther upward. "Please, Dean. Brother."

There's something indescribably dirty in the way he says it.

Dean brushes back Sam's hair with his free hand. "Promise me you'll say something if you want to stop," he tells Sam softly.

Sam opens his eyes. "Of course. But I trust you." He smiles, and there's nothing mocking in it, nothing but warmth. "I love you."

"I love you, too, you freak."

Sam's eyes fall closed again. "Just what everybody wants to hear. Are you going to spank me or not?"

"You need to learn some manners, boy."

"Are you going to teach them to me?"

By way of answer, Dean gives him one stroke with the belt, not lightly. Sam gasps as it leaves a darker stripe of pink across his ass.

Dean rubs lightly over the fresh mark. "OK to keep going?"

The English translation of Sam's expression is something along the lines of "are you stupid?"

Dean keeps going.

The leather makes a solid smack every time it hits Sam's skin, and Sam makes sounds of his own, too: moans, not-quite-cries, a bitten-off "God!" Dean gives him one across the tops of his thighs, and Sam jumps, nearly displacing himself from Dean's lap—Dean just rests a hand on the back of Sam's neck and says quietly, "Remember, Sam, this is what you need."

Sam's wriggle, and the unflagging hardness of his cock against Dean's leg, are all the confirmation Dean requires.

Dean doesn't go fast, but the pace is steady. He varies where he strikes, trying not to come down too hard on any stretch of skin. Sam moves with it, both toward and away from the belt, and Dean keeps his other hand where it is, both a restraint and a reassurance.

It's only when Sam's gasps are a little wetter, a little closer together, that Dean puts the belt back onto the duvet and gently massages the reddened skin. Sam murmurs; Dean smacks him, not very hard, with his hand; Sam quiets, his breath a languid sigh. Dean does this for a while, spanking Sam with his hand, gradually decreasing the frequency; stroking his skin lightly, with careful fingertips; massaging his ass and lower back, feeling the muscles loosen under his touch.

By the time Dean finishes, Sam is passive, quiet, almost sleepy. Dean tugs on Sam's shoulders, urging him up, then lies back on the bed and gathers Sam up. Sam buries his head in the soft place above the crook of Dean's arm, and Dean holds him, pets his hair and the back of his neck.

After a moment comes, "Thank you," muffled, barely above a whisper.

Dean kisses the top of Sam's head. "You're welcome," he answers, and realizes that his voice isn't much stronger.

Sam's shaking a little, and then his body jerks in a way that's not just adrenaline-comedown trembles. "Sam?" Dean says cautiously, hand on the back of Sam's head.

Sam breathes out, long and unsteady, and takes his face out of Dean's side. His eyes are shining with tears. Oh God, Dean thinks, what did I do wrong? Sam wasn't crying when they finished, and he definitely wasn't crying during.

"I don't know why I'm all tearful all of a sudden," Sam says, and rests his head on Dean's arm. "It just, fuck"—he wipes at his eyes—"came on a minute ago."

"Is everything OK?" Dean asks. "Did...did something happen that you didn't want?"

"No. God, no, Dean, I wanted everything that happened. I just—I don't know—I feel all broken open, except I'm safe with you, and it's the most overwhelming thing."

Dean starts to pull the comforter over them both, but Sam says, "Wait," and Dean realizes his jeans and underwear are still around his knees. Sam kicks both off and adds with a laugh that's also partly a sniffle, "Those briefs aren't going back over my ass anytime today."

They both wind up naked, wrapped in cotton and down, and Dean says, "I want you to always feel safe with me." He runs his hand up and down Sam's side, slowly, soothing.

"I do," Sam says. "Always, Dean. Just...lie here with me for a while?"

“As long as you want,” Dean promises.

*********************

There is nothing more awesome than a _T. Rex_ skeleton. Nothing. And now that Dean has seen one, he can say that for sure.

Its name—**her** name, a docent corrects him—is Sue, and Dean can't help a bark of laughter when Sam starts singing "A Boy Named Sue" under his breath. Sue hasn't been on display very long, and she's clearly a popular attraction—throngs of people stand around the sides of her dais. Dean feels no shame that he's just as openmouthed about this as all the kids are.

"Dean," Sam says, "you look like you're six."

"That," replies Dean, with dignity, "is because this is the most awesome thing I and everyone else in this room have ever seen in our entire lives."

There's also—believe it or not—a _Star Wars_ exhibit, with things like the original costumes and props; they walk through it with Sam whispering various asides. In retaliation (there's just something so wrong about your younger, taller student lover standing with his hands unabashedly on your hips and snickering, "I'm your father, Luke!"), Dean makes Sam go through the Shackleton exhibit with him. Then Sam wants to see the gems, so they do that, too.

"You can't tell me you didn't enjoy that," Dean says to Sam as they're driving back to the hotel.

"Yeah, yeah," Sam acquiesces. "I still can't believe they didn't have Princess Leia's iron bikini, though. That was, like, a staple of my sexual awakening."

"Dude, I think that thing was a staple of everyone's sexual awakening."

"It was hot. And with those boots..." Sam sighs nostalgically. "And then she totally kicked Jabba the Hutt's ass."

Dinner is pizza, the traditional Chicago deep-dish variety. Dean had never understood the love of the thick dough—too chewy, in his opinion—but, begluttoning himself on buttery crust and Italian sausage, he decides that now he totally gets it, and he's not sure he can go back to Boston (or, God forbid, Rockshire) pizza ever again.

"Between that and the barbecue," he says when they've finished eating, "I'm going to have to start running ten miles a day when I get back."

Sam pats Dean's stomach. "I think you'd be cute with a little belly. Perfect abs are overrated."

"That'll happen soon enough," Dean says. The men in his family all get soft around the middle—it's one of the reasons why Dean runs now, and why he did crew and soccer all through college, and soccer and baseball in high school before that. He figures he can stave off the inevitable only so long, though. He explains this to Sam.

"Speaking of your family," says Sam, "I think you should take me to Kansas and introduce me to the esoteric customs of the Midwest."

Dean does not have words for what a terrible idea that would be.

"I'm serious," Sam says. "Your family sound really cool."

"Oh, God, Sam, they're about the farthest thing from cool ever. My uncle listens to Neil Diamond and my aunt's favorite book is _The Bridges of Madison County_. They both voted for Bush. I mean, I love them and they're good people and they raised me, but they're really, really not cool."

"Right," says Sam. "They raised you. That makes them incredibly cool."

"Sam, I don't think it's a good idea."

Sam arches one flawless patrician eyebrow. "Are you ashamed of me?"

_No, but I probably should be_ is what Dean wants to say.

Sam flops onto his back. "I was hoping to try some Kansas City barbecue, but I hear it actually really sucks. I bet what we had the other night is way better."

Dean is torn between defending the barbecue of his people, and laughing at Sam for trying to goad him by insulting—of all things—barbecue. "Are you impugning the foodways of the great Heartland?"

Sam shrugs elaborately. "I'm just saying what I heard."

Dean puts the pizza paraphernalia on the floor and stretches out on the bed, one arm across Sam. "Sam, what we're doing—it's risky enough..."

Sam rolls onto his side—keeping Dean's arm where it is—and looks at Dean unusually seriously. "I know," he says. "And I don't want to do anything that would put your job or your grad school stuff in danger. But there's no reason anyone has to know. You told them that I went to MIT with you, right?"

"Right," Dean says reluctantly.

"So we'll just keep going with that," Sam persists, "and we'll say that my family went back home, but I wanted to come visit you. It's reasonable; I'm guessing MIT doesn't start back for a while."

"There's a January term," Dean concedes. "Classes usually don't start until the first week of February, and a lot of people don't come back until then."

"So it makes sense," says Sam. "Look, I'll be completely polite, completely respectful—I was raised to have excellent manners, even if you don't see them much—and it'll only be for a couple of days. We don't have to act like...like there's anything going on. As far as your family will know, we're just friends. I just think it would be cool to meet them."

Dean traces the lines of Sam's face: the arcs of his eyebrows, the perfect breadth of his nose, his wide mouth and the definition of his jaw. He's got a bad feeling about this, but it's well established: He can't say no to Sam. He gives in. "Alright. When do you want to go? I should call and give them a heads-up."

****************

 

They leave the next morning; Sam takes the sleek black Lexus and Dean takes his truck. They don't need them both, but it doesn't make sense for Sam to leave his car here in Chicago. They're in Kansas before dinner.

Dean doesn't like lying to his family, but it's not the first time he's done it. One of the most vicious fights he and Nick ever had, in fact, was about that very thing; the phrase "closeted asshole" was used at least once, and not by Dean. Like Dean told Sam, he loves his family, Neil Diamond and all. But he really doesn't think they'd understand—and God knows his paramilitary ex-Marine father wouldn't understand—why their baby boy likes dick sometimes.

When they get to Lawrence, supper's almost ready, and Aunt Martha greets Sam like he's long-lost family. She loves meeting Dean's friends, but hasn't had much of a chance to, since they've been back East only twice: once to deliver Dean to MIT at the start of his freshman year, and then a second time when he graduated. Dean has a moment's panic wondering whether his aunt and uncle will put together that they didn't meet Sam at graduation, but tells himself that it was long enough ago—and there were so many people around—that they'll just assume they must have missed Sam in the shuffle.

The single bed in the tiny guest bedroom is already made up, and Aunt Martha fusses over Sam, showing him in great detail where everything is and impressing upon him that he must ask if there's anything else he needs. Then she hugs him and goes off to bed. Dean drops into the desk chair and waits for her door to close; when it does, he says with a sigh, "So, now you've met the family."

"I don't understand why you're embarrassed. They're the nicest people ever. I feel like I just walked onto the set of _Oklahoma!_ or something."

"Please don't ever say that again. No self-respecting Kansan wants to be mistaken for an Oklahoman."

Sam tugs Dean off the chair and onto the bed with him, and they make out for a little while, but eventually they have to stop: They have to keep quiet, and Dean needs to sleep in his own room. Sam kisses him one last time and laughs. "I'm glad I was able to meet your family, but it kind of just dawned on me that in doing so I gave up all opportunities to get laid."

"And tomorrow's Saturday," Dean says, "so neither of them will be at work."

"Dammit," Sam says, but he sounds more amused than anything else.

Still, Dean's slept next to Sam for the past few nights running, and it's a habit he's sorry to have to break.

******************

 

They're eating breakfast the next day when there's a knock at the front door.

Uncle Frank and Aunt Martha exchange glances, and Dean knows what they're thinking. That's all he needs, is for his father to show up right now. Sam, oblivious, bites into his toast.

Uncle Frank goes to get the door, and when he says, "Well, hello, John," Dean has to keep himself from sinking his head into his hands.

Dean hears his father hanging up his coat in the front closet; then John comes into the kitchen. He looks tired, but otherwise no worse for whatever wear he's been through since Dean saw him last. It's been months, and even longer since they've spoken. John pulled a drive-by at graduation last spring, and before that...was last Christmas, when John surfaced unannounced in much the same way he has just done. A year. It's hard for Dean to believe that he hasn't spoken to his father in a year, but it's not like they chat on the phone, and John doesn't do email.

Dean stands up and shakes hands with his dad; they don't hug. It's not their way. Sam stands, too, and Dean says, "Dad, this is my friend Sam Conover. From MIT."

John's staring at Sam like he's seen a ghost.

"Sam," John says after a moment. "I'm John Winchester. Dean's father."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, sir," Sam says, all good breeding and manners.

John sits down heavily, and Aunt Martha puts coffee and food in front of him. Dean looks down at his eggs and can't eat any more.

"So, son," John says, "I hear you're teaching."

"Right, sir," says Dean. "It's a private school in Massachusetts. Rockshire Academy."

John nods. "Pretty campus." He adds, "I, uh, I've stopped by a few times. Just to get the lay of the land."

Dean hasn't seen him at Rockshire, but he knows his father did this when he was in college: He came down out of Nick's apartment one morning, on his way to class, and saw the battered old Impala parked across the street. He's pretty sure he saw John on the MIT campus a few times, too, but just glimpses, not even enough time to call out to him.

"I must have missed you," Dean says levelly.

"I didn't stay long," John replies.

Aunt Martha stands and takes her plate and Uncle Frank's to the sink. Briefly, she rests her hand on Dean's head. "Dean graduated at the top of his class at MIT," she says.

"Aw, Aunt Martha—" Dean protests.

"I'm just telling the truth, Dean. Anyway, he was at the top of his class, John, and now he's applying to graduate school in mathematics."

John looks back at Dean. "So that's what you've decided to do."

Dean tries to keep his voice uninflected. "That's what I decided to do a while ago, Dad."

"And you're not considering the service?"

There are so many ways Dean wants to answer this question: _Will you shut up about that already?_ and _They don't take queers_ and _The day Dubya signs up those twins of his is the day I enlist_. He settles for, "I don't think the military would be a good fit for me."

"John," says Aunt Martha, "he was invited to apply to the PhD program at MIT."

John makes a noise that's part grunt, part snort.

Sam has been watching all of this like a tennis match, but the expression on his face is now frankly bewildered. He schools it into polite sociability, though, and says, "Mr. Winchester, I don't know how familiar you are with the graduate math program at MIT, but they don't just invite people to apply. It's more like 'you can send us your application and maybe we'll deign to read it when we have some free time.' They really want Dean. It's quite a compliment to what he's achieved, sir."

"Sam—" Dean protests.

"He's just stating the facts, Dean," Aunt Martha interrupts. "Sam's right, John. You should be very proud of Dean."

Dean stares down at his breakfast.

"Well," John says, "that's good news, son, if that's what you want to do."

"Thanks, Dad," Dean says.

Sam's face has lost its mannerly veneer, and his eyebrows are up. The English translation of this, Dean thinks, would be "what the fuck?"

"So, Sam," John says, "you were at MIT with Dean?"

"Yes, sir, that's right," Sam answers, back to good breeding once again.

"And you've graduated, too?"

"No, not for a while. I was a first-year when Dean was a senior, so I'm still there."

John nods. "Sam. You know, that's a family name for us. My brother's name. For you, too?"

It occurs to Dean for the first time that John has lost two Sams: his brother, killed in Vietnam, and his youngest son. Maybe it's the name, Dean thinks. Maybe it's cursed. He hopes not, though, for this Sam's sake.

"It was my great-grandfather's name," Sam says.

John nods and goes back to eating.

Dean wonders why in the name of God he let Sam talk him into this.

******************

 

After breakfast, John pulls Dean into the living room. "I have something for you, son."

Aunt Martha immediately thinks of something for Sam to help her with in the kitchen, and Dean follows his father.

John takes a box out of a duffel he's left on Uncle Frank's desk. It's about the size of a cigar box, covered in black fabric, not wrapped. He hands it to Dean. "Well, go ahead. Open it."

Dean does.

The gun inside is a small semiautomatic, a Colt, with pearl grips. Dean doesn't ask whether it's licensed, doesn't point out that there's no way in hell he can or will take this into the Rockshire dorms.

John presents another box. "Standard, silver, and iron rounds."

"Thanks, Dad," Dean says.

"You remember how to load one?"

It's not difficult, with a semiautomatic. Dean remembers his father teaching him this when he was a kid, back when John was around more. Back when, Dean thinks, Dean was less of a disappointment to him. "Yeah, Dad, I remember." He takes a clip of standard ammo, loads it, chambers a round. Then unloads the gun, puts all the safeties on. He's a good shot—you can't live as John Winchester's son and not be—but Dean hates shooting, hates firearms. He's lived in a city too long, he thinks.

"Your friend," John says, "Sam. How well do you know him?"

Dean bites back several potentially disastrous responses, and says, "Pretty well."

"What do you know about his family?"

"Rich and from Connecticut. His mom's dead; his dad works all the time. The housekeeper mostly raised him, from what I can tell. Why?"

John, of course, provides no explanation. "You know anything else about his family? Where he's from?"

"They're kind of messed-up and WASPy. Oh, and he was adopted."

"Really," says John. "That's unusual."

Dean thinks, not for the first time, that his father functions on a plane of existence completely separate from that of the rest of the world. "It's not that unusual. Dad, where are you going with this?"

"At birth?"

"Why, are you thinking of adopting a kid yourself?" The words are out before Dean realizes what he's said.

"You want to watch your mouth with me, son."

Dean doesn't answer him back, but he doesn't break John's gaze, either.

"Just answer the question, Dean," John says, and there's maybe a note of resignation to it.

Dean sighs. "He was about six months old, I think. Dad, seriously, I feel weird talking about this. It's really none of our"—_your_—"business."

Dean's father finally releases him, and leaves in the Impala to "take care of some things." Dean stays where he's standing in the living room, at a complete loss. He can't figure out what the hell to do with his Christmas present. He can't figure out his father at all. He half wants to just leave the Colt on the desk for Uncle Frank to deal with, but Dean's not sure the man has ever touched a gun in his life, and Dean doesn't want to make him start now. Dean double-checks that it's unloaded, then carefully puts it back in its box, takes it upstairs, and shoves it under his bed.

God, his fucking father.

Dean goes into the kitchen, where Sam and Aunt Martha are baking. He wants to lean against Sam, let Sam's arms engulf him, but he obviously can't do that right here.

But Aunt Martha, God bless her, decides that she needs a variety of items from the grocery store and Target, and would he and Sam mind going? They should do something nice for supper tonight, since Dean's father is visiting. She writes out a list and sends them along.

Target's on the other side of town, but only about ten minutes away—Lawrence is small. Once they're about a mile from the house, Dean turns onto one of the side streets, stops the truck, and pulls Sam close. "I'm sorry my family is so weird," he says.

"Dude, whatever. Your dad is totally Rambo."

"Well, that fits. He gave me a gun."

"He gave you a _what_?"

"A gun. A Colt semiautomatic."

"I'm guessing your dad doesn't know that you voted for Nader."

Dean laughs, and he can hear it verging on just this side of hysterical. "I doubt my dad even knows there was an election. OK, that's an exaggeration, but I doubt he cared very much. He's sort of...above all that."

Sam's stroking Dean's back gently, like he's calming a skittish horse or an upset child. "Do you even know how to use a gun?"

"It's been a while, but yeah. My dad used to take me shooting when I was a kid."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. You heard him asking whether I was going to join the military. He's always wanted me to do something like that. I don't know what he wanted me to do when I finished college, but it wasn't teaching at a prep school. I think he wanted me to go with him and do...whatever he does."

"So you liked the shooting and stuff?"

"I hated it. I mean, I wanted to spend time with him, and I wanted him to be proud of me and everything, so I did it and tried to act like I liked it. And I was pretty good at it. But I never enjoyed it."

"What does he want you to do with the gun?"

Dean sighs. "I don't know. I don't think he has any idea that I can't just take it into the dorms at Rockshire."

Sam snorts. "Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta."

This time Dean's laughter is a little more genuine.

Sam's hand moves up to brush through Dean's hair. "Yeah, your dad's weird, but it's not like I come from a family that's a bastion of normality. I just wish he had the sense to be proud of you. I mean, your aunt and uncle obviously are. They're awesome, by the way. Especially your aunt."

"Yeah, they're good people. They're good at dealing with my dad. He's not even technically related to them—Aunt Martha is my mom's sister—but they always take him in whenever he shows up. Which is never on any kind of schedule, and always without warning."

"But you know that I wouldn't care even if they were all crazy, right?" Sam says. "I'm glad I got to meet them, and I'm glad your aunt and uncle are as cool as they are—shut up, they are cool, even if I did see your aunt's Barry Manilow collection. But I'd love you no matter what. You know that, right?"

Dean lets his head rest on Sam's chest, listens to Sam's heartbeat. "Yeah, I know."

"Good." Sam kisses Dean's forehead. "Let's go to Target."

*******************

 

John's still not home when they get back. Aunt Martha dismisses them now that their errands are run, and they spend most of the rest of the afternoon tromping around the property—Frank and Martha have several acres, with a creek running through the lower part, and Dean takes Sam down there. He guides them along the edge of the frozen creek and finds the spot of shore that was his place as a kid: a stretch of sandy bank beneath a copse of low-hanging trees. It's slightly below the ground level of the rest of the property, and especially when the trees are in leaf, anyone sitting here is shielded from sight. The branches are bare now, but the feeling of concealment, of security and safety, is the same.

He and Sam huddle in a ball of L. L. Bean and North Face—it's the only feasible way to stay warm—and Dean thinks that despite the cold, despite the strangeness that is his father, this is the happiest he's been in a long time.

"Lie back," Sam whispers.

"Ugh, the sand..."

"I want to suck you off," says Sam in that same sultry murmur. "Lie back and let me make you come."

"Sam, it's goddamn freezing out here!"

Sam kisses him slow and hot, tongue casual and possessive in Dean's mouth. "Does that feel cold? Because that's what's going to be wrapped around your cock. Don't you want me to take you all the way down my throat, suck you hard and fast until you come in my mouth?"

"Jesus, Sam," Dean breathes, but he goes along with it, lying back and praying he'll be able to brush all the sand off himself when they're done.

Sam flips up the hood of his jacket. "To keep my head warm." He grins. "And yours too."

Dean would smack him in the shoulder, if that weren't the moment Sam chooses to take Dean's cock into his mouth. Dean's fully erect in a matter of seconds, and Sam's warm, wet suction has him gasping in just a few more. Sam tongues him behind the head, on the bundle of nerves that are guaranteed to render Dean nonverbal with incoherent pleasure, and even though it's below freezing outside, Dean has to take off his gloves so that he can slide his fingers into Sam's hair. He can feel his hips rolling—until Sam pins them down, and that plus sudden harder pressure from Sam's mouth is all Dean needs. He comes, trying to bite back his sounds, but he doesn't entirely succeed, and he can hear his moans as the last of the orgasm shudders through his body.

Sam tucks him back in, zips him back up, and licks his lips in a way that's entirely too pleased. Dean kisses him, tastes himself in Sam's mouth. "What do you want me to do for you?"

Sam looks down, flushes. "That...um, listening to you...watching you...was really enough."

Dean would like to laugh at Sam for coming just from sucking some cock, except that he did the exact same thing the first time he went down on Mackenzie and Nick. And while this is by no means the first time Sam has gone down on Dean, they've been around each other nonstop without sex for a couple of days, and making out last night had been pleasant but ultimately...unclimactic. What with Dean's parental figures being right there on the same floor and all.

After a while, the sex-induced heat starts to wear off, and they head back towards the house. "Now I need a shower," Sam complains.

"Don't blame me for that," Dean says. "I didn't even do anything."

Sam takes off one of his gloves, reaches over and removes one of Dean's, laces their fingers together until they're within sight of the house. "You didn't have to," Sam says.

***************

 

John returns right before supper. He's quieter than usual, even more awkward around Sam, and Dean catches himself wishing—guiltily, but by no means for the first time in his life—that John would just go back on the road, return to doing whatever he does, and stop disturbing all of their lives at irregular intervals. John stays the night, which means that some rearrangement occurs: He takes Dean's room (Dean doesn't protest), and Dean takes the living room couch (Sam protests that he can just as easily sleep down there; Aunt Martha says that he's a guest and she won't hear of it).

Later, when the house is dark and silent, Sam glides noiselessly downstairs—a talent born of sneaking around boarding-school halls after hours, no doubt—and takes _A Brief History of Time_ out of Dean's hands before settling himself against Dean on the sofa.

"So you're going to party with us Midwesterners for New Year's?" Dean says, gathering the blankets around them both.

"I bet you guys do it right," Sam answers, yawning.

"Yeah, you know it. Pretty much we watch the ball drop and eat steak. My cousins come over. P Diddy himself couldn't do better."

"I imagine not," Sam says, sleepy amusement coloring his voice. There's quiet for a few moments, and Dean lets himself enjoy the nighttime peace of the house, the solidity and warmth of Sam under his hands. "I can't sleep down here, can I?" Sam adds after a while.

"Not without a huge scandal. I can take you upstairs and put you to bed, though, if you want," Dean teases.

"I'd like nothing more than for you to take me to bed."

"Sam, I can't—"

"I know. Your whole family is around. I'll just pretend for a while that I'm in bed with you, falling asleep next to you."

"One day, Sam," Dean says. If Harvard works out for Sam, if Stanford works out for both of them, they could do this every day, without having to hide. Dean lets himself imagine an apartment in Boston—tucked into a sturdy triple-decker, maybe, like the one he lived in after he moved out of the MIT dorms, only without the crazy hacker roommates (except for Ash, his best friend freshman and sophomore year, thrown out for fighting—he misses Ash, with his terrible beer and worse hair). Dean pictures California, where he's never been, where it never gets cold and where he could kiss Sam on a public sidewalk and no one would blink.

"Stanford," Sam says, voice slurred like he's falling asleep. Dean should nudge him and make him go back upstairs, but he can't force himself to do it, not quite yet.

"It never gets cold there," Dean says.

"Palm trees," says Sam. "There's a gay pride statue on campus, did you know that? You could kiss me there and no one would even look twice."

"I was just thinking that."

"Great minds," says Sam. "But Boston's not bad, either. We could make out in Harvard Yard, let the tourists stare."

"They should be so lucky."

"They should. We're hot."

"And you're falling asleep. You should probably head back up."

"Uh-huh," Sam agrees, and doesn't move.

"Sam, I mean it."

"So do I. In like five minutes." His eyes fall closed.

"Seriously." Except that Dean's stroking Sam's hair and ears, the back of his neck, and it's not exactly strong encouragement for Sam to move.

"Five minutes," Sam insists.

"OK," Dean says, and holds Sam as he slides the rest of the way into sleep.

**************

 

The next morning, Sam's cheerful and bright-eyed like he didn't just spend most of the night on a couch that's definitely not meant to sleep two men of more than six feet in height. Dean, underslept and achy from sleeping cramped up like that, hates him a little. Sam takes over the pancake-flipping and chats happily with Aunt Martha while Uncle Frank reads the _Star_. John is nowhere in sight.

"Is my dad around?" Dean asks, wondering whether his wish was in fact granted during the night.

"He ran on out of here like a man possessed as soon as it got light," Uncle Frank says. "He didn't pack up, though, so I'm guessing he's coming back."

True to Uncle Frank's word, John comes tearing back in the front door shortly before noon. He looks more haunted than usual, the circles underneath his eyes as sharply defined as craters, his gaze feverish. "There's something I have to tell you all," he says. "Especially you, Dean, and you, Sam, before you let...whatever you're doing go any farther than it has."

Sam drops _The Cider House Rules_ onto the table and stares up at John, eyes narrowing. Dean has heard the story of how Sam nearly got suspended his junior year for fighting: He laid out a senior who made some kind of racial slur against Mexican people—Mexican women, in particular. The story goes that Sam had the kid on the floor with one punch; he still won't repeat whatever it was that the kid said. Dean thinks that Sam's expression now might match exactly the one he was wearing when he stood up in the dining room in Butler Hall last year.

_"Dad,"_ Dean says, appalled, but he's not sure about what.

Aunt Martha drops her hand onto Sam's shoulder, and he lets her. His expression doesn't change, but he does stay in his seat.

John looks at Sam. "You're adopted," he says.

Sam's eyebrows go up. "What business is it of yours?"

John forges on. "You were adopted sometime in November or December of 1983, when you were six or seven months old. Do you know anything about your biological parents?"

"Apart from the fact that they abandoned me on a doorstep in New York City?" Sam replies icily.

Aunt Martha lifts her hand to her mouth.

"Dad, what are you saying?" Dean asks. He fights down an urge to panic—everyone's heard his father say some crazy shit over the years, and this is kind of embarrassing, but it doesn't have to be anything more than that. Doesn't have to be anything more than a fluke and a run of not-uncharacteristic erratic behavior on his father's part.

There's a long silence in the sunny kitchen, and with every passing second, Dean becomes more and more sure, with dreadful certainty, that this is something more than erratic behavior.

"Your brother's not dead, Dean," John finally says. "He never was."

Dean can't think of a thing to say.

What comes out first is: "I saw the death certificate." His voice isn't coming out the way he wants it to. "Dad, I looked. I went to the county courthouse last summer and I looked."

"No," Aunt Martha says. "No, Dean, your brother lived. He lived, but that thing was never going to stop chasing him. He was declared dead, and I...I took him to New York. It wasn't just a random doorstep. It was an adoption agency. Families First. Seventy-fourth Street and Third Avenue. November fourth, 1983."

Sam's arms are wrapped around himself, tightly. He's looking up at Aunt Martha. "That's the name of the agency," he says. His voice doesn't sound much better than Dean's. "I've never been there, so I don't know where it is. But that's the name. My dad...my actual dad...my adoptive dad—whatever—just told me a few days ago."

Dean's breathing is constricted. He can't look at Sam.

"Sam died in the fire with Mom." Dean isn't sure who he's talking to.

"No, son," Dean's father tells him with unbearable gentleness. "You carried him out."

Dean's standing before he realizes it—standing, with his chair knocked to the floor behind him. "You said that wasn't true. You said that I was asleep in my room, and I passed out from smoke inhalation, and you carried me out, and Mom and Sam were...didn't make it."

John takes a breath, lets it out. It's the first time Dean's seen his father hesitate about anything, ever. "You heard the noise and woke up," he tells Dean. "I gave Sammy to you and told you to take him outside. I tried to get your mom down but...couldn't. You ran outside with Sammy, and you did pass out, but in the Robinsons' driveway, behind their car."

Dean can feel himself shaking. "Across the street?"

"You were hiding back there to keep Sammy safe, I think. You fainted from the smoke inhalation, but also from shock and fright. We gave you something to...keep you asleep, and I gave Sammy to your aunt Martha."

"You knew?" Dean says to his aunt. "You knew all the time, that Sam was alive—that I wasn't fucking crazy with this thing that I remembered—that I didn't make up because I wanted it to be true, but that I remembered because it actually fucking happened—you knew about this since I was four years old, and you lied to me the entire time?"

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm so sorry, Dean. It was the only thing we could think of. The only way to keep Sammy safe from the thing that killed your mother. If none of us knew where he was."

Sam stands up. "I think you're all out of your minds," he says. "I'm leaving."

"I had your hair tested," John says.

Sam turns and stares. "You what?"

"You had enough hair for about three people—" John stops and grips the counter, and Dean realizes that he's watching his father keep himself from tears. He has never in his entire life seen his father display anything like emotion. Dean thought it was something he'd never see. There are many things, today, that Dean thought he would never see.

"You had enough hair for about three people," John begins again, "and when you were about four months old, your mother cut it for the first time, and you howled like it was the worst thing in the world. I kept a lock of it in my car, and your mother gave one to your aunt Martha, your aunt Cathy, to your grandmother. I still have a little bit of it, and a contact of mine was able to test it against hair from your brush upstairs. I had him test it against some of Dean's, too, and against mine, just to be sure. The DNA matches, but the fact that you look like the spitting image of my own brother was what tipped me off. The fact that your name is still Sam—well, that's just the universe with its sick sense of humor, son."

"I'm not your fucking son," Sam spits, and John actually flinches. "My father's name is Hastings Conover, and God knows he's not the most perfect father in creation, but he's the one who taught me how to ride a bike, and he's the one who didn't leave me on a fucking doorstep in November in New York City."

Dean's conscious of nothing but the overwhelming need to get out, now; it doesn't matter where. He ducks around the table without looking at any of them, without looking at Sam, with his father's words running through his head like a banner: _before you let whatever you're doing go any farther than it has_. It's gone, it's gone way too far, his little brother whose baby-smell he can still remember, milk and talcum; who used to yank his hair and his ears; who used to follow Dean with his big hazel eyes whenever they were in the same room. His brother.

"Dean!" from somebody in the kitchen—his father or Uncle Frank—but Aunt Martha says, "Let him go, if he needs it." As he's running up the stairs, he hears the front door open and then close again. Sam, probably. Sam should leave and get the hell away from him before Dean does anything worse than he already has.

The truck keys are on his desk. He shoves them into his pocket with shaking hands, picks up the jacket he was wearing yesterday. That he was wearing when Sam—God, the thought makes him sick. But his leather jacket is somewhere downstairs, and he doesn't want to stop long enough to look for it. Keys, jacket. He has another thought, crouches down beside the bed, pulls out the box that could hold Cuban cigars. It won't fit in his interior pocket, so he slides it up underneath his jacket, tucks it under his arm.

His father is standing in the front hall when Dean comes downstairs. He reaches to put a hand on Dean's arm or shoulder, but Dean evades him with a "Don't touch me" and goes outside, closing the door behind him.

He goes over to the truck and opens the driver's-side door, but he realizes quickly that he's in no shape to drive. His hands are still shaking; all of him is trembling. He doesn't care so much what happens to him, but it's New Year's Eve and people are out, making last runs to the store before their parties, visiting family, visiting friends. He'll probably kill somebody—and not just himself—if he's on the roads. He closes the door to the truck and walks down towards the creek.

He sits in the shelter of the winter trees, leafless but still adequate protection from the world. The water's surface is still frozen, and the sand is cold where he's sitting on it. He takes the box from under his arm, carefully removes the Colt 1911 from it, loads it with a clip of standard ammunition. Takes the safeties off. Then he sets it on the ground, looks at it for a while, tries not to think.

He's not sure how long he sits there. The occasional wind, dry and frigid, rustles through the tree branches. He's sitting and it's cold; he must be cold, too; but he doesn't feel it. He runs his fingers over the gun's pearl grips, traces the lines of its barrel. He picks it up, puts it back down. It weighs less than you would think, about as much as a couple of paperback books. He places it back onto the sand, but closes his hand over it. Some amount of time goes by. He's not really sure how much.

"Dean?"

It's Sam.

Sam clambers down onto the bank, but comes up short. His face is streaked with tears, but his voice is careful when he says, "Can I sit down, Dean?"

Dean nods.

Dean can't look him in the eye, but he watches Sam take in the empty fabric-covered box and another, smaller box that the cartridge came in. Sam's eyes go inevitably to Dean's hand where it lies on the ground; then they go back to Dean's face, where Dean refuses to meet them.

"Dean," Sam says, "will you please unload that?"

Dean doesn't respond.

He hears Sam inhale, as though he's about to say something, but Sam cuts it off, whatever it is. "Dean," he starts again, "I would do it myself, but I don't know how. Will you please do it for me?"

He can't say no to Sam.

Dean takes out the cartridge, puts it in Sam's outstretched hand. Sam sets it within the triangle of his crossed legs, then says, "Will you give me the gun, too?"

Dean does.

Sam takes the gun and hurls it, throwing it far enough downstream that it hits the surface of one of the pools and breaks the ice. John will be angry, Dean thinks. The gun was probably expensive. Then Sam takes the ammo and throws it, too, into the water. His aim is good; he wasn't a lacrosse player for nothing.

"I'm so sorry, Sam," Dean says after several minutes go by.

"For what?"

Dean looks him in the eye this time, but by accident, only because he can't stop himself from raising his head in disbelief. "Where do you want to start? The part where I'm your teacher? Or the part where I molested you?"

"_Molested_ me?" Sam's laugh is sharp, incredulous, and utterly lacking in mirth. "Dean, you were there, right? Not only was I not kicking and screaming, but I initiated it. I wanted it, and I'm not sorry for that."

"Stockholm syndrome," Dean mutters, and Sam says, "Oh, give me a fucking break."

There's another silence, and Sam goes on, "Dean, if anybody owes anybody an apology, it's the people up in that house, for lying to you. You didn't do anything wrong—"

"Besides sleep with my student?"

"That wasn't bothering you last night!" Sam snaps. "OK, no, maybe it's not ethically the best thing to have done. But you're not giving me any grades, and you're not writing my college recommendations, and again, let me remind you of just how consenting I was. Dean," Sam says, and now his voice is gentle, "you saved my life. You carried me out of a fire and hid us behind a car to make sure I was safe. And you never forgot me."

"I couldn't," Dean says. "I couldn't. I went to a psychologist my freshman year of college because I thought there was something wrong with me, that the memory was so clear. I mean, I had memories of Mom that were a lot dimmer than that, and I knew they had actually happened. We talked about the fire over and over again, and the therapist said the false memory would fade as I dealt with the trauma and accepted what had happened, except it never did."

Sam reaches over for him, but stills his hand halfway. "Can I?" he asks. "Please?"

Dean nods again, and Sam puts his hand, with its broad palm and strong fingers, over Dean's.

Dean looks up at Sam now and tries to reconcile the baby he knew—Sammy's little round face, chubby cheeks, shock of cherubic curls that really had been enough for three people—with the face of this almost-man, with its precise, beautiful angles, the intelligent eyes, the expressive, generous mouth.

He feels sick again, but he doesn't take his hand away from Sam's. "I can't go back to Rockshire," is what he says.

Sam doesn't say anything out loud, but his face is its own inquiry.

"I can't," Dean starts, then stops. "I can't see you every day and pretend like you're just another student. It was hard enough before, but I can't...there's no way, now."

"Can you leave midyear?"

"Dr. Bissell will be pissed, but it's not like he can force me to stay. And it's better...like this, than some other way."

"Are you just going to stay here?"

"I don't—God. I don't know. I can't look at them."

"Are there friends you can stay with?" Sam's voice is careful again, so careful, and Dean hates being fragile like this—he's always been solid, sturdy, a heartland boy with a good mind and a strong back—but it's like that's all broken apart.

"Mackenzie, out in Seattle. Ash, over in Nebraska."

"Will you promise me that?"

"That what?"

"That if you leave here, leave Rockshire, that you'll stay somewhere with people who care about you?"

"Yeah," Dean says, "I promise," and he's not a man to break his promises.

Another silence comes, interrupted only by the prairie wind through the grass and trees.

**Author's Note:**

> [Sue](http://www.fieldmuseum.org/sue/index.html) is real, and lives at the Field Museum in Chicago. The artworks to which Dean refers are likewise real (or surreal): [Figure with Meat](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/contemporary/citi/object?id=4884&collcatid=8), by Francis Bacon, and [Pitchfork Lady](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/contemporary/citi/object?id=58137&collcatid=8), by Don Baum. I personally tender no opinion regarding the relative merits of Chicago vs. Kansas City barbecue.
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> **This story has a sequel, [This Shelter in the Grove](http://archiveofourown.org/works/56157).**


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